The Air Trust Part 27

Suddenly he started with violent emotion. Behind him, in some unaccountable way, the door had been closed. He heard a key turn, softly.

"What--what's this?" he exclaimed. He heard the woman moving about, somewhere in the gloom. "See here!" he cried. "What kind of a--?"

The match burned brightly, all at once. He peered about him, wide-eyed.

"This is no office!" shouted he. "Here, you! What's the meaning of this?

This is a bed-room!"

Sudden realization of the trap stunned and sickened him.

"G.o.d! They've got me! Flint and Waldron--they've landed me, at last!" he choked. "But--but not till I've broken a few heads, by G.o.d!"

The match fell from his burnt fingers. Whirling toward the door, he rained powerful kicks upon it. He would get out, he must get out, at all hazards!

Suddenly the woman began to scream, with harsh and piercing cries that seemed to rip the very atmosphere.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Aiming at the base of the skull she struck.]

At the third scream, or the fourth, the key was turned and the door jerked open.

In its aperture, three men stood--the two who had been so long trailing Gabriel, and a policeman, burly, red-jowled, big-paunched.

Gabriel stared at them. His mouth opened, then closed again without a word. As well for a trapped animal to make explanations to the Indian hunter, as for him to tell these men the truth. The truth? _They_ knew the truth; and they were there to crucify him. He read it in their cruel, eager eyes.

The woman had stopped screaming now, and was weeping with abandon, pouring forth a tale of insults and abuse and robbery, with hysterical sobs.

Full in the faces of the three men Gabriel sneered.

"You've done a good job of it, this time, you skunks!" he gibed. "I'm on. You'll get me, in the end; but not just yet. The first man through this door gets his head broken--and that goes, too!"

With a snarl of "You d.a.m.ned white slaver!" the officer raised his night-stick and hurled himself at Gabriel.

Gabriel ducked and planted a terrific left-hander on the "bull's" ear.

Roaring, the majesty of the law careened against the bed, crashed the flimsy thing to wreckage and went down.

Then, fighting back into the gloom of the trap, Gabriel engaged the two detectives. For a moment he held them. One went to the floor with an uppercut under the chin; but came back. The other landed hard on Gabriel's jaw.

He turned to strike down, again, the first of the two. He heard the bed creaking, and saw the policeman struggling to arise. In a whirlwind of blows, the second detective flailed at him, striving to beat down his guard and floor him with a vicious rib-jolt.

"All's fair, here!" thought Gabriel, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a chair. For a moment he brandished it on high. With this weapon, he knew--though final defeat was inevitable, when reinforcements should arrive--he could sweep a clear s.p.a.ce.

Perhaps he might even yet escape! He heard feet trampling on the stairs, and his heart died within him. Well, even though escape were impossible, he would fight to a finish and die game, if die he must!

Down swung the chair, and round, cras.h.i.+ng to ruin as it struck the policeman who was just getting to his feet again. Oaths, cries, screams made the place hideous. Dust rose, and blood began to flow.

Armed now with one leg of the chair, Gabriel retreated; and as he went, he hurled the bitterness of all his scorn and hate upon these vile conspirators.

And as he flayed them with his tongue, he struck; and like Samson against the Philistines, he did great execution.

Like Samson, too, he lost his power through a woman's treachery. For, even as the attackers seemed to fall back, shattered and at a loss before such fury and tremendous strength, behind Gabriel the woman rose, a laugh of malice on her lips, the policeman's long and heavy night-stick in her hand.

A moment she poised it, crouching as he--seeing her not--swung his weapon and hurled his defiance at the baffled men in front.

Then, aiming at the base of the skull, she struck.

Sudden bright lights spangled the darkness, for Gabriel. Everything whirled about, in dizzying confusion. A strange, far roaring sounded in his ears.

Then he fell; and oblivion took him to its blessed peace and rest; and all grew still and black.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BEAST GLOATS.

"Fer Gawd's sake, let's have a light here, somebody!" panted the dishevelled policeman. Outside, the ringing of a gong became audible.

Then came a clattering of hoofs, as the police-patrol, nicely-timed by the conspirators, and summoned by a confederate, drew up at the box on the corner.

Somebody struck another match, and a raw gas-light flared. From the hallway, two or three others crowded into the wrecked room. Disjointed exclamations, oaths and curses intermingled with harsh laughter.

The woman--Lillian Rafter, probably the finest actress and stool-pigeon in the whole detective world of graft and crookedness--lighted a cigarette at the gas-burner, and laughed with triumph.

"Some make-up, eh kid?" she demanded of the taller detective, who was now nursing a bad "s.h.i.+ner," as a black eye is known in the under-world, and whose face was battered to a bleeding pulp. "Believe me, as a job, this is some job! From start to finish, a pippin. He was bound to fall for it though. No help for him. Even if he hadn't b.u.t.ted into the 'plant' we fixed for him in the alley, there, I could have braced him in the street with my tale of woe. He was just bound to be 'it,' this time.

We had him going, all ways for Sunday!"

Scornfully the woman Gabriel had befriended in her seeming misery, spat at him as he lay there stunned and scarcely breathing on the dirty floor.

"And just pipe this, will you, too?" she exulted, holding up the five-dollar bill he had given her. "And this?" She exhibited his name and address, written on a card. "In his own writing, boys. As evidence to hold him on a white slave charge, is this some evidence or isn't it?"

"Oh, we'll hold him, all right!" growled the other detective, whose right arm dangled limp, where the chair had struck him. "The ---- ---- of a ----! He'll go up for a finif, a five-spot, or I'm a liar! And once we get him behind bars, good-night!"

He deliberately drew back his heavy boot and kicked Gabriel full in the face.

"You ---- ----!" he cursed. "Try to bean _me_, will you? d.a.m.n you!

You've made _your_ last soap-box spiel!"

"Come on, now, boys, out with him, an' no more rag-chewin'!" the policeman exclaimed. "Git him in the wagon, an' away, before a gang piles in here! You, Caffery, take his feet. I'll manage his head. Jesus, but he's some big guy, though, the ---- ---- of a ----!"

Together, the battered policeman and the detective who still had some strength left in him, raised Gabriel's limp body and carried it from the room. The woman, meanwhile, stood there inhaling cigarette-smoke and laughing viciously to herself.

"You easy mutt!" she exclaimed. "Dead baby, room-rent due, wanted to get home to sister--and you fell for that old gag with whiskers on it!

You're some wise guy all right, all right, I don't think. Well, as a stall it was a beaut. And I must say I never screamed better in all my life. And that wallop I handed out, was a peach. If I don't pull down five hundred for this night's work--"

"Shut up, you ----!" snarled Caffery, as he turned into the stairway.

"Keep that lip o' yours quiet, will you, or--"